Chapter Text
Jon is reminded of why he hates Jurgen Leitner – no tea is drunk – biting, scratching, licking, and general miscommunication – brief appearance of Elias makes everything terrible – lies (Martin) – admiration of lies (Jon) – a harrowing tube ride – the gift of a woodlouse – Jon does not meow once for yes, twice for no – a bedroom invasion (not entirely unwelcome)
Accepting the job of Head Archivist is something that’s brought Jon a lot of anxieties: the knowledge that he’s not really qualified for it; the fact that he’s honestly kind of horrible at people and now has to manage three of them; the sheer size of the task in front of him, because there’s no denying that the archives are an absolute shambles. The whole change, monumental and all-encompassing, in routine and expectations, internal and external, has been desperately anxiety-inducing. Not to mention the way the statements make him feel, which he tries to think about as little as possible.
What he hasn’t worried about at all until now is the possiblity of being turned into a cat.
It’s a Leitner that does it. Of course it’s a fucking Leitner. And the worst part is that Jon has nobody to blame but himself. Even if he doesn’t believe in a single other thing they do at the Magnus Institute, he has cause to know just how real Leitners are. And yet, for some reason, when he’d been looking through a cardboard box filled with statements and assorted rubbish and found a small, leather-bound book at the bottom entitled In the Skin of a Feline, he’d flipped it open curiously instead of screaming and throwing it as far away from himself as possible before setting it on fire, which would have been the action of a normal, rational human being.
And then he’d read the entire bloody thing.
It had been small enough that it hadn’t taken very long, half an hour perhaps, but he hadn’t moved the entire time, which, in retrospect, probably should have been a clue that something was weird. But Leitners have a way of stopping you from thinking, of making sure you obey and do whatever they want you to. That was how it went with Mr. Spider all those years ago.
Anyway, it had been a short enough time that nobody had yet felt the need to come and look for Jon amongst the stacks, and now it’s too late. He’s a cat. Four legs, little wet nose, sensitive whiskers, a tail, the whole nine yards. He has no idea how it is that he didn’t notice what was happening at the time, but at some point while he was reading In the Skin of a Feline he’d just… turned into one. He’d flipped the back cover of the book closed with a little white paw and yowled in shock, leaping away from the book instinctively, up to the highest shelf he could, bolting along it until he came to the end and found a small, dark corner to hide in.
He's still hiding in the small, dark corner. He can see the book when he pokes his face out from behind a messy heap of statements and he’s hissed at it a few times, not that that’s done any good except for making him feel slightly better. He does it again, just in case. The book gives no visible sign of being intimidated.
He wonders what the hell he’s supposed to do now. Is he going to have to live as a cat forever?
No.
No, that’s not an option.
Maybe he should read the book again. It’s not like he can turn into more of a cat than he already is, and it might have some clue about how to reverse it. He pokes his head out of his safe corner again, watching the book. Okay, he can do this. He just has to go over there, read the book again, this time actually taking note of what it says instead of getting lost in a horrible Leitner-induced haze, and then do whatever it instructs to end the curse before anyone else has to know this even happened.
Simple.
The distinctive sound of the door to the main archive swinging open drifts through the stacks, and Jon instinctively crouches back in his dingy hole, pressing himself against the wall where nobody can see him.
“Jon? Are you in there? I made tea!”
Martin. Of course it has to be Martin, the person Jon least wants to discover him in a state like this. Sasha would regard him as a problem to be solved. Tim would collapse in a bout of hilarity. Elias would… well, all right, he’d rather Martin found him than Elias, but this is still far, far less than ideal. Martin will be kind. Jon can’t bear people being kind to him. He lurks in his corner, still and silent, waiting for Martin to decide he must be elsewhere and leave.
“Jon?”
Footsteps. Tiny rustling sounds as Martin’s arms and legs brush against paper and shelving. The scent of tea, milky with two generous spoonfuls of sugar. Martin always puts too much sugar in, but his tea also always tastes wonderful, so Jon has never complained about it. The cat has amazing senses, Jon has to admit. It would be brilliant to be able to smell like this all the time. He can smell Martin himself, too, as he pokes his head into the various crannies of the archive. The floral scent of his shampoo, the sharper tang of his deodorant, a hint of sweat, and something… Martin. Jon isn’t sure what it is, but the cat knows it smells like Martin and that’s all it really cares about. An almost silent vibration starts in his throat and it takes a moment for Jon to realise that he’s purring.
He stops.
Good Lord. How embarrassing.
“Jon?” Martin says again, much closer this time. “Huh. He’s been here.”
Another rustling sound. Jon pokes his head around the corner of the pile of statements again, very carefully so as not to be noticed by Martin. He’s touching the cardboard box Jon was sorting through until this happened, rifling through the statements there.
“In the Skin of a…” he murmurs, hand moving to hover over the gold embossed leather of the book’s cover.
Jon streaks back along the shelf, leaps, and lands neatly with all four paws on the book, back arched, ears back, hissing at Martin, who snatches his hand away and stumbles backwards with a shriek.
“Shit! What the hell?”
Jon hisses again, just to make sure his meaning is entirely clear. Martin puts his hands up in surrender.
“Okay, okay, I’m not touching! Jesus! Where the hell did you come from, anyway? Jon’ll have your guts for garters if he finds you in here. Mine too, probably.”
He hesitates, then holds out a hand, wiggling his fingers enticingly. Jon stares at them, not sure what he’s supposed to do. The fingers come closer. Jon leans away from them while still keeping all four paws on In the Skin of a Feline. He wishes he had balance half this good as a human. Martin lets out a little chuckle and reaches his fingers closer still, inching towards Jon’s furry little face.
He gives in to temptation and bites them.
It’s just that… well, Martin’s fingers were right there, all wiggly and juicy and tempting. Not biting them would have seemed like a waste.
“Ow!” Martin pulls his hand back and waves it in the air, grimacing. “You little bastard!”
Jon feels a little guilty. He hadn’t actually wanted to hurt Martin. Just to bite him.
Martin stares at Jon for several long moments. Jon stares back, not blinking, and it’s Martin who looks away first.
“All right,” he says. “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be back in a minute.”
Jon hisses at him as he departs, just for fun, and regrets a cat’s inability to laugh when Martin turns for a moment to stick two pissy fingers up at him before he vanishes round the corner.
All right, he’s probably only got a few minutes, depending on exactly what Martin’s gone off to do. If it’s to get a cat carrier he’ll be a while, since there probably isn’t one anywhere in the Institute, but if he’s just fetching Tim or Sasha, they were both in the assistants’ office when Jon came in here earlier so that won’t take long at all. Jon slinks off the book and opens it with his paw.
In the Skin of a Feline, the title page announces. It’s in very good condition for such an old book, with barely any foxing or wear. Shame about the library plate below the title: From the Library of Jurgen Leitner.
If Jon ever gets to meet Jurgen Leitner there might well be a brutal pipe murder.
He struggles to turn the next page – it’s a lot harder to turn a single page than to open a leather cover when all you’ve got is paws – but he manages it eventually.
“Better shut the door behind you, Sasha, in case it tries to get out.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. Feet clatter through the stacks, and before Jon’s scanned down the first page, all three of his assistants are rounding the corner to his nook. He gets back on top of the book, sits down firmly with his tail curled around his paws, and glares at them.
“Oh my god, it’s so cute!” Tim cries, reaching out a hand that’s clearly intending to scritch Jon between the ears.
“Tim, wait!” Martin says, but too late. Jon has already swiped out, claws extended, and left two nice long scratches across the back of Tim’s hand. They well up with blood immediately.
“Fuck!” Tim sucks on the back of his hand and retreats to the back of the group, giving Jon a wounded sort of glower.
“It bit me,” Martin says sympathetically. “I don’t think it wants to be touched.”
That’s when Jon discovers that cats can’t really roll their eyes, which is a shame. He settles for levelling his most disparaging look at Martin, although he isn’t sure how it’s coming off. Probably all right, cats are good at looking disdainful.
“Well, what are we going to do?” Sasha demands. “We’ve got to get it out of here somehow, Jon’ll be furious if he finds out.”
“He might not,” Tim says, lowering his hand, which seems to have mostly stopped bleeding. The scratches couldn’t have been very deep. “He quite likes cats.”
Jon opens his mouth to inform Tim that cats are the best animals in the entire world thank you very much, but all that comes out is a meow.
Right.
This could end up being tricky. Somehow he has to get his assistants to leave without touching either him or the book, so that he can read it in peace himself and fix this situation, which is becoming more asinine by the minute.
“Why’s it sitting on a book?” Sasha, who is too clever for her own good, says.
Jon’s heart sinks. He narrows his eyes at her.
“Yeah, it was kind of weird actually,” Martin says, and Jon transfers his glare to him. None of them seem particularly affected by it. “I was looking for Jon to give him his tea, and I found this stuff here, it looks like he was sorting through this box. And then I saw this book and I was just looking at it when the cat just appeared out of nowhere and jumped onto it and hissed at me.”
“You didn’t touch it, did you?” Sasha says, alarmed. “You’ve got to be careful with books in this place, Martin!”
“I know that! I wasn’t going to touch it, I was just reading the… oh, that’s weird. It was closed and now it’s open. I was reading the cover, In the Skin of a…” he trails off, his hand going to his mouth.
“What?” Tim says, his voice suddenly very sharp. “In the skin of a what, Martin?”
“In the Skin of a Feline,” Martin says slowly.
They all stare at Jon. He stares back.
There’s a very long silence.
Then Tim says, in a deliberately calm, level voice. “Please tell me that’s not our boss sitting there on that book.”
Martin breathes, “Shit.”
Sasha pushes her glasses up her nose and leans forward to look closely at Jon. He leans backwards again, but takes care not to shuffle off the book. There’s absolutely no way he’s letting any of them get their hands on it; Tim as a cat would be a nightmare. But he’s also deeply uncomfortable with the way Sasha’s eyes are running over him. He’s not sure what she’s inspecting him for and he can’t tell by her face whether she’s found it. He’s always been shit at reading people’s faces anyway. Being a cat hasn’t changed that.
“Jon?” she says finally. “If that’s you, can you give us some sort of sign?”
Jon considers it. Admitting that he’s been turned into a cat will be the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to him in his life, including the time he fell over on a bus and plunged his face right into someone’s cleavage, but pretending he’s just an ordinary cat will almost certainly get him thrown out of the Magnus Institute, never to be permitted to return. He doesn’t really like the idea of becoming a stray cat. He also doesn’t like the idea of admitting his plight. He hesitates, frozen with indecision, for too long. Sasha sighs and stands up, pushing her glasses back into place again.
“I guess it’s a real cat,” she says.
“Unless it is Jon but when he turned into a cat he forgot all about being Jon and just thinks he’s a cat now,” Martin suggests.
Jon tries once again, and fails, once again, to roll his eyes. Just how forgetful does Martin think he is? He relieves his feelings by hissing at him again. He’s getting very fond of being able to hiss at people whenever he wants to.
Martin blinks. “Although it does… well, it does sort of seem as though he understands us. Maybe he’s just being Jon?”
Jon stares up at him in fury. Just being Jon? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Martin is horrible. He hates Martin.
Tim stifles a snigger. “Yeah, that checks out,” he says. “Come on, boss, you’re going to have to help us out here. If it’s really you, give us a meow?”
Jon hates all his assistants. Every single one of them. But, on balance, he supposes it’s best if they are cognisant of the whole situation, so he reluctantly opens his mouth and gives his crossest, least friendly meow.
“It is you!” Tim crows. Then he holds his scratched hand up and waves it at Jon accusingly. “I can’t believe you scratched me, boss! I thought we were friends.”
Jon does not dignify this with a response, though it is tempting to swipe out and see if he can scratch Tim again. Instead he gets up and taps at the book a few times with his paw in the hope of communicating what’s happened.
“So it was the book?” Martin says. Jon nods, which feels a bit weird to do as a cat, but at least they’ll understand it.
“That’s a hell of a Leitner,” Tim says. “Can I…?” He stretches his hand out yet again. You’d think he’d have learned better by this time. This time Jon gets him right across his knuckles, making him squeal. He plants his feet back on the book and glares at Tim.
“Tim, it’s a Leitner,” Sasha says, umimpressed. “We’ve already got one cat person, we don’t need another.”
Tim scoffs, but subsides. “I’d make a much cuter cat than him,” he mutters, and Sasha’s lips twitch.
“He is a bit scruffy,” she allows. “He looks like he could do with a good brush, and feeding up a bit.”
All right, that’s it. Jon’s sacking all his assistants the second he gets turned back into a person. He does his best to communicate his feelings by turning his back very deliberately on Sasha and looking at Tim and Martin instead.
She laughs.
Jon pretends not to hear.
“Well, apart from giving him a few square meals what are we going to do?” Martin demands, slightly impressing Jon by being the only one to think about this at all practically. He’s known for a while that he’s been underestimating the man, and this is proof. “I mean, we can’t just leave him a cat forever.”
“We’d better call Artefact Storage,” Sasha says. “They’ve got the experience and equipment to deal with Leitners safely. As safely as you can deal with a Leitner, anyway. Although…” She pauses. Jon fully intends to refuse to look around at her to see what she’s doing, but his curiosity overcomes him. As soon as he turns his head, she grins. “He is pretty cute as a cat,” she says, looking him dead in the eye and still grinning. “Maybe we should leave him this way.”
Jon suddenly notices that she’s retreated a few steps, just far enough that he can’t easily flash a paw out and scratch her. If he wants to do that, he’ll have to leave the book unsupervised, and nope.
Honestly, why did he ever want assistants with brains?
Sasha is pulling her phone out of her pocket and dialling. “Hi, Sonja?” She turns and walks away a little distance while she continues her conversation.
Jon’ll scratch her when she gets back.
“We’re not going to touch the book, you can stop guarding it,” Martin says, looking at Jon with a little furrow between his eyes. “Also, I think there’s some milk in the break room fridge if you…”
He falters and tails off as Jon turns the full force of his displeasure on him.
“Never mind,” he mumbles. “Sorry.”
Jon notices with interest that his tail is whisking back and forth, signalling his annoyance. Cats really get all the best body language, so much easier to understand than humans. He adds a little growl, just to really get his point across, and watches smugly as Martin backs away.
“Sonja’s on her way down,” Sasha announces, sliding her phone back into her pocket. “Hopefully we’ll get this sorted out soon.”
“And in the meantime, we can all enjoy Jon acting like he’s been dragged in off the street and wants to escape the shelter,” Tim says, poking at his bloodied knuckles. “Lucky us.”
“Stop trying to pet him and he’ll be fine,” Sasha says unsympathetically. “You wouldn’t keep on touching him like that if he was still a person.”
Actually, Tim is one of the most tactile people Jon’s ever met, but it’s true that he rarely tries to rub Jon behind the ears. And anyway, it’s the touching of the book he’s objecting to, not the touching of himself.
Not that he wants to be touched.
Sonja and two of her assistants arrive shortly afterwards and sweep the book off to Artefact Storage. To Jon’s annoyance, they also insist on sweeping him off there, sitting bolt upright in the hastily emptied cardboard box with furious hauteur, and Sasha, unanimously selected as the assistant least likely to piss Jon off by accident (though probably also the one most likely to piss him off on purpose), carrying him.
Sonja and her entire department, after nearly five hours, far too many close inspections of Jon’s cat self, several peculiar rituals, two small fires, and one yowling, flailing, hissing, biting, scratching attempt at flight and subsequent recapture, completely fail to turn Jon back into a human man. Sasha, now noticeably dishevelled and sporting a nasty gash down one cheek, carries him back down to the archives in his cardboard box. Jon feels bad about the gash; his escape attempt had been less of a temper tantrum and more of a full-blown flat-out panic attack. He can’t explain, obviously, but he thinks Sasha guesses. She hasn’t complained about her injury at all, not even when it was just the two of them on the way downstairs.
She puts Jon’s box down on the closest desk, which is Martin’s, and steps back with a sigh.
“They didn’t turn him back?” Martin says, his voice squeaky with horror.
“Couldn’t,” Sasha says, putting her hands in her pockets and looking judiciously at Jon. “There wasn’t anything in the book about it. The book wouldn’t burn. Ripping out the pages didn’t work, they just grew back. It was sort of gross. Anyway, we tried a whole bunch of stuff and none of it worked, so either it’ll just wear off on its own or…”
They all know what she’s leaving unsaid. Or Jon is like this permanently. A cat. A cat that knows it’s supposed to be a person and that it never will be again. A cat that’s supposed to be the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Jon briefly entertains a picture of himself sitting in his ridiculously fancy chair at his ridiculously fancy desk, meowing expressively into an old-fashioned tape recorder.
It’s a shame cats can’t laugh, really. They’re missing out.
“Shit,” Tim observes. “What are we going to do with him? He can’t go home like this!”
Which is deeply offensive but also true. Jon, who has had a very stressful afternoon, decides that since he’s the one who’s a cat, he’s therefore not the one who has to decide what to do next, and starts licking his paws and cleaning behind his ears. It’s a surprisingly soothing action, especially after the last few hours of inspection, experimentation and fire. He only tunes back in to the conversation when Sasha lets out a loud groan right next to him, making him jump.
“Sorry, Jon,” she says, and pats him absently.
Jon freezes, paw already half outstretched, claws extended. Then, slowly, he pulls it back. She does have a very nasty scratch on her face, and he tore the sleeve of her blouse. She’s earned a pat or two.
Also, it feels kind of nice.
“Yeah, so I can’t do it,” she says. “I’ve already got Lulu, and I doubt Bitey McScratchface here will play any nicer with another cat than he does with people.”
Jon lets out an indignant meow at this. He would so! Cats are much better company than most people.
“That’s what you say now,” Sasha says, looking down at him severely. “But you won’t be looking so bossy when Lulu’s trouncing you up and down the sitting room and burying your battered corpse in the aspidistra pot. Tim?”
Tim winces. “I would, but I’m not allowed pets at my place. And yes, I would absolutely break the rules for you, boss, but my downstairs neighbour got caught with a goat in his flat last week and now my landlord’s on some sort of weird anti-animal rampage. Yesterday he found a butterfly in the hallway and accused Mrs. Bigwither of starting an insect farm. So, not really a safe space for people who are currently cats. Sorry.”
They all look at Martin, who sighs. “I suppose that means you’re coming home with me, then, Jon. No biting, though, okay?”
Jon does not dignify this with an answer. He has no intention of going out of his way to bite Martin, but if Martin asks for it, well, he’s not going to just not bite him, is he?
Martin sighs again.
“Sorry Marto,” Tim says, and he does look genuinely apologetic.
Jon tries to summon up some indignation, but it’s not as though Tim’s wrong. It isn’t fair on Martin to have to be the one to take Jon home. It’s not even as though it’s a weekday. One night would be one thing; an entire weekend is quite another. He’s going to have to tolerate two days and three nights with his hyper-critical, cruel boss who picks apart every single thing he does. All right, Jon has been trying to improve his behaviour, but he isn’t honestly sure how well he’s been succeeding. After all, Martin doesn’t know that Jon cringes internally every time he snaps or barks or a sentence somehow comes out far ruder than he intended and makes Martin’s face fall. He certainly doesn’t know that sometimes Jon just stares at him for minutes on end, imagining what it might be like to be smiled at properly, be touched, be hugged by that big, lovely figure, if he hadn’t completely and utterly destroyed any possibility of friendship between them by being, not to put too fine a point on it, an absolute dick.
Occasionally Jon has wondered if Elias sent Martin down to the archives unexpectedly because he knew it would fuck Jon up in the head, suddenly having to deal with a complete stranger on top of coping with the monumental change of his promotion, but that’s ridiculous. Elias wouldn’t have promoted him and then set him up for failure. And anyway, it’s kind of shitty of Jon to try and blame his own mistakes on Elias; he needs to take responsibility for them himself, try to fix them himself. And he will. As soon as he’s worked out what to say that might make it sound like he’s at all sincere. And is sure that he’ll actually do things better afterwards, because there’s no point apologising if he isn’t going to bother to change. And has then summoned up the courage to actually do it.
One day.
“It’s fine,” Martin is saying, though he doesn’t look happy. “I like cats. I’ll just pretend he isn’t…” He glances at Jon and flushes. “Er, yeah. Well. We’ll be fine. Hm.” He looks at Jon for a moment. “I don’t suppose anyone’s seen a cat carrier lying around the Institute?”
“There’s one in Artefact Storage,” Sasha says. “But it’s cursed so that any cat that goes inside gets this raging hunger for human flesh and just keeps eating people and growing and growing until…”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll just use the box,” Martin says quickly. “It’s not like he’s a normal cat that’s going to jump out and run away. You’ll be all right in the box, won’t you Jon?”
Jon sort of wants to hiss at him again, mostly because he’s still feeling ruffled and annoyed, but he’d much rather be carried around in a box than in a cat carrier. Carriers are so undignified. So he curls himself up in the box and rests his chin on his paws and blinks up at Martin, whose mouth briefly curls up into a little smile.
“I guess that’s as good an answer as I’m going to get,” he says. “Ready to go? Anything you want me to, er bring? I mean, your coat, or…”
Honestly, what does Martin think he’s going to do with a coat right now? He ignores the question.
“Right,” Martin says, after a long moment of silence. “Well, I’ll just go and get mine. Back in a tick.”
“I’m going to get going too,” Tim says. But he pauses after getting up and looks at Jon with a little frown. “Try and be nice to Martin, okay, Jon? He’s doing you a massive favour here.”
He doesn’t add and you’ve been frankly absolutely terrible to him so maybe give him a break, but Jon knows what he means. And maybe he’s right. Maybe Jon can try to actually be kind to Martin for once, while he can’t muck things up by frowning or sighing irritably or, well, talking at all. He can be a nice cat. He’s sure he can.
There’s just something about Martin that gets under his skin, is the thing, warm and uncomfortable, making Jon unwilling to meet his eyes unless he’s scolding him, making him always aware of where Martin is in any room and what he’s doing, noticing every little tremble and mistake, every tiny fluctuation in his voice. Sometimes he thinks he’s nothing more than a satellite revolving around Martin, aware of and obscurely ruffled by his every movement.
Obviously he isn’t going to admit any of this to Tim, even if he could currently speak. He shuts his eyes instead, pretending to fall asleep.
There’s a pause, then gentle fingertips stroke over his head, right between his ears. It feels very nice. And then they’re withdrawn and he hears Tim’s footsteps leaving the office, retreating down the corridor, pausing for a quick conversation with Martin, climbing the staircase up to the ground floor of the Institute.
“He’s right, you know,” Sasha tells him quietly. “Maybe you can take this weekend to get to know Martin better and see that he’s actually a really good guy. I think you could be friends, if you just tried.”
Jon opens one eye and gives her a half-hearted glare. Sasha smiles at him calmly, ruffles the fur along his back, and then she’s yelling, “Bye, Martin!” and is gone too.
“Looks like it’s just you and me,” Martin says with a sigh as he comes back into the room with his coat on and a long, cosy looking scarf wrapped several times around his neck. “Let’s do this, then.”
He picks up Jon’s box and heads up the stairs, pausing to flick the lights off as he goes. Jon stays crouched low, hoping that nobody will notice him as Martin leaves. He’d prefer as few people as possible be aware of his ridiculous, humiliating situation.
“Ah, Martin!” comes a jovial voice, and Jon feels his hackles rise immediately. No, no, no, of all the people who could have walked into Martin as he was leaving with his cat shaped boss in a cardboard box, Elias is the worst possible one by a very long way.
“O-oh, hello, Mr. Bouchard,” Martin says, fumbling with his words nearly as badly as he does with Jon. Jon feels a surge of indignation at that. Elias has no right to scare his assistants!
“Dear me, what’s this?” Elias says. His face appears over the side of the box, and Jon has to work hard to repress the urge to scratch the bland, patronising smile right off his face.
“Oh!” Martin glances down too, as though to check there’s no way of concealing Jon. “That’s a, er, a, a cat.”
“I can see that, Martin,” Elias says with a bit of an edge to his voice. Jon can see Martin’s throat move as he swallows hard. “Why do you have a cat here in the Institute?”
“O-oh, he, er it, isn’t mine. I-I mean, I’m taking care of him for now, but he, er…”
He tails off.
“Yes?” Elias enquires. He’s smiling again, obviously enjoying Martin’s discomfiture.
Martin has gone very pink. “It – he’s a stray,” he says desperately. “I-I know I shouldn’t have, but I mean, look at him. He’s so thin, and his fur’s all scruffy and I couldn’t just throw him out, Mr. Bouchard. I-I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again, I swear, I just…”
And suddenly Jon is incredibly impressed. Martin wasn’t scrambling for a story at all! He’s pouring all this out as though Elias has dragged a shameful tale out of him, but it turns out Jon knows Martin better than he thought, and he knows Martin did it all deliberately, the stumbling, the hesitation, the hint of a plea for mercy. He’s looking right into Elias’s eyes and lying to him. Jon has never once managed to do that. Martin is… is… is brilliant! Elias, meanwhile, is looking absolutely delighted, as though Martin’s nervousness is a delicious meal to him. Jon wonders if he could scratch Elias’s eyeballs right out with his claws.
“I really don’t approve of animals in the archives, Martin,” he says reprovingly, and Martin hangs his head and shuffles his feet. Elias’s eyes seem to glitter as he watches. “Speaking of the archives,” he goes on. “Is Jon still down there? I need a word.”
“Er, I think he’s already gone,” Martin mumbles.
“Really?” Elias lifts an eyebrow, but if he thinks eyebrows can intimidate Martin Blackwood he is sorely mistaken.
“Yeah, he was looking a bit peaky,” Martin says. “So I… sort of nagged him until he agreed to leave.” He lowers his eyes and shifts Jon’s box in his arms slightly, then looks back up at Elias with a desperate, uneasy smile. It’s a masterpiece of a performance. “I mean, he always stays late, so it seemed like it wouldn’t matter if he left on time for once, but I… sorry.”
Elias stares at him for a long moment and Martin looks steadily back, still with that nervous little frown on his face. Jon marvels at how a man utilising so much guile can make himself appear so guileless.
Finally Elias pats Martin on the shoulder, making him flinch, and says, “Well. Jon’s a lucky man to have you looking out for him. Perhaps he’ll stop asking me to have you removed from the archives now. He really is very stubborn.”
“Right,” Martin mutters, his face flaring bright red. Jon cringes. He only asked twice, right at the beginning, but Elias is making it sound as though he complains about Martin continually, and Jon doesn’t! Especially not to Elias. Martin makes a small movement and says, still muted and red, “Well, I should…”
“Of course, Martin.” Elias stands aside to let him pass, and then watches them all the way down the corridor until they turn the corner.
Martin doesn’t relax until they’re two streets away from the Magnus Institute. His breath puffs out so hard that it would probably ruffle Jon’s fur if a very brisk breeze weren’t already doing that. “Christ,” he says. “I thought you were going to scratch his eyes out for a minute there. I thought I was going to scratch his eyes out for a minute there.”
Jon pokes his head up and licks Martin’s hand to show his approval. Martin doesn’t smile, though. Instead he looks down at Jon as he walks and says, “Did you really ask him to transfer me out of the archives?”
Ah. Jon has very much been hoping that Martin will forget about this particular barb in among all the other Elias bullshit, but of course he hasn’t. Why would he? Jon has no way to explain that he hasn’t requested that since the first month and that despite the fact that he unfailingly snaps and complains about Martin he’s actually got quite used to him being around and would be very much put out if he went anywhere. He doubts Martin would believe it even if he could. Instead he sinks back down into his box and shuffles to the side so Martin can’t see his face.
Above him Martin sighs and says, “Right,” very, very quietly.
Jon feels horrible.
They walk in silence until they get to the tube stop, and then they descend into the bowels of the earth in silence and join the crowds lining the hot, stuffy platform, still in silence. Jon stays curled in the corner of his box, half from shame and half because he hates going on the tube at the best of times and this is very much not the best of times. He tries to remember if he ever knew where Martin lives and hopes it isn’t too long a journey. This is an awful time to be taking the underground, too. Everyone’s going home and grumpy about their terrible days at the office. Jon is jostled and bumped several times, although he’s somewhat reassured by the tight grip Martin keeps on the box and the way he shuffles to keep Jon from being buffeted as much as possible. It’s very generous of him given the circumstances, Jon thinks.
And then there’s a rattling and clanking and screeching and the echo of loud announcements as the train pulls up, and Martin eases his way into a carriage. He does his best, but he can’t stop people bumping into the box, and Jon finds himself crouching low with all his limbs braced, trying to stop himself hissing in fear. He can’t bring himself to look out at what’s happening, but the carriage is obviously standing room only, and as the train begins to move again he feels Martin brace himself carefully while it sways and clatters along.
Jon survives four stops, tense and nervous, held as steady as possible between Martin and what he thinks must be a pole from the way it bends his box slightly, but when a whole crowd of people swarms in at the fifth stop and the air above Jon goes suddenly dark and one side of the box crunches inwards while the whole thing tilts suddenly to the side, he can’t hold in his panic. Not even thinking about what he’s doing or where he’s going he scrabbles his way upwards, claws hooking into Martin’s jacket, his animal brain and lithe cat body taking him instinctively to the safest place he knows of and burrowing him into the top of Martin’s coat, which is unfastened a little way. A second later he’s all the way inside the coat and twisting himself around so that he can hang onto Martin’s jumper with his claws. Everything’s an overwhelming mess of smells and sounds, but he thinks he hears Martin squeak, and then his arms close around Jon inside his coat and, yes, that’s his voice, directed downwards towards Jon’s small, trembling body.
“It’s all right, Jon,” he says soothingly. “I’ve got you, you’re all right. You’re all right.”
He isn’t exactly all right, but the tube is much less terrifying from inside Martin’s warm coat, with Martin’s steady heartbeat next to his ear and Martin’s strong, solid arms wrapped around him. Even the sounds are muffled in here, and Jon allows himself to curl into a more comfortable position and shut his eyes. They rattle and shake and sway for what feels like a very long time, but eventually he realises that Martin is walking, standing, murmuring something Jon can’t quite hear over the general underground din, walking again, and some time later a blast of cold air hits him even inside the coat, and Jon realises they must have left the underground and be out in the open air again.
He opens his eyes and wriggles until he can put his head out of the opening in Martin’s coat. He has no idea where they are now, no concept even of how long it took them to get here, but it’s just a relief to get a breath of fresh air and see the dark sky above him instead of the harsh lights of the underground.
“There you are,” Martin says. “All right?”
One of his hands has automatically come up to support Jon in his new position, so Jon cranes his neck a little and licks his fingers. They twitch, but Martin doesn’t move them away or tell Jon to stop it, so he licks them a few more times. And then, because for some reason he can’t help himself even though Martin has done nothing to deserve it, he bites them. Not hard, it’s not much more than a nibble, really, but Martin yanks his hand away.
“Jon!”
Jon slinks back down into his coat guiltily. Why is he like this? Martin has done nothing but take care of him ever since he found him, even after discovering that Jon’s been complaining to Elias about him, and all Jon can do in thanks is bite him? Ugh. He’s terrible. He’s the one who should be fired, not his assistants.
He’s so ashamed of himself that he only shows his face again when Martin’s trudged all the way up a long set of stairs and let himself into his flat, and even then it’s only because Martin undoes his coat and Jon’s only options for continuing to hide are to try to scuttle up his jumper or to leap to the floor and shoot behind the sofa. In under three seconds, he’s noticing that Martin hasn’t dusted his skirting boards in a really long time and taking a moment to prod at a woodlouse that’s trundling along beside him.
“Er, Jon?” Martin’s says. “You okay behind there? You’re not hurt or anything, are you?” Jon meows, and after a pause Martin says, “I’ll take that as a no.”
He listens to Martin shuffling around – hanging his coat up, taking his shoes off, moving around the little flat with the quiet routine of a man who’s been doing the same thing every evening for years. He ends up in the kitchen and Jon hears water running, the opening and closing of cupboard doors, things being lifted and put down, chopping, and, after a while, the scent of food cooking. It smells delicious. A few minutes after that, Martin begins to hum tunelessly to himself and Jon is so hopelessly endeared that he has to pounce on the woodlouse several times in a row, batting around the little ball it’s curled into with his paws to relieve his feelings.
He wonders if Martin would understand it as an apology if he brought him the woodlouse as a present.
No, of course not. That’s ridiculous. And not a proper apology.
Jon isn’t sure how long it is before Martin calls out for him. Keeping track of time seems incredibly unimportant in the shape of a cat, and also he’d much rather watch woodlice than think any more about what he’s done.
“Jon?” Martin calls again. Jon listens to him coming closer, accompanied by the delicious scent of food. “I’ve made dinner for us both, but I’m not letting you eat behind the sofa, okay? We’ve got to spend the weekend together and we might as well make the best of it.”
Jon keeps his eyes fixed on the woodlouse, which has finally uncurled itself and is weaving its way unsteadily towards the skirting board. Martin doesn’t really want him to come out; why would he, after everything?
Martin sighs.
Jon continues to ignore him.
“Okay,” Martin says, and Jon hears him put two plates down. “I’m going to eat my dinner, and you can come out and eat yours whenever you want it.” The sofa whumfs as he sits down, and then there’s the sound of a plate and a fork, Martin eating, and nothing else for some time. Eventually, Martin adds, “Yours is chicken. I cooked it specially for you.”
Oh god. Martin must know that Jon can’t take the guilt trip, the absolute bastard.
Jon gives the woodlouse one last tap with his paw and slinks out from his hiding place, head down, avoiding Martin’s eyes. He’s going to eat his dinner because Martin cooked it specially for him and Jon can’t ignore that, he just can’t, but he isn’t going to look at Martin or demand anything else of him, and he definitely isn’t going to bite Martin again.
He isn’t.
He eats his chicken as fast as he can and is about to leap off the coffee table to run back behind the sofa when Martin swallows his last mouthful of food and says, quite sharply, “Jon!”
Jon pauses mid-run and looks at him cautiously.
Martin puts his fork down. “Look, I meant what I said before. We’ve got to spend the weekend together, and yeah, I know it’s not ideal, okay? You think I’m a useless ass whose only skill is making tea.” Jon shuffles his paws and stares at the carpet. He doesn’t think that any more, he honestly doesn’t, but it’s not surprising that Martin believes it given that he literally recorded it on tape. God, he is such an arsehole. “And I think you’re kind of an arsehole,” Martin goes on. “But we’re stuck together for the weekend until we can go back to the Institute and try and find another way to turn you back. So let’s just forget about all the boss-employee stuff and try to get along for the next couple of days. Okay?”
Ugh, he’s being so reasonable. The worst part is that it makes sense. If they don’t at least try to be civil to each other this weekend is going to be a wildly awkward nightmare, and Martin’s already doing enough for Jon. He doesn’t want to make things even harder for him. Yes, it would be much less gruelling to just hide behind the sofa, only coming out for occasional meals, for the entire weekend, but he has to admit that it would be very unfair to Martin, who probably just wanted a nice relaxing weekend without his shitty boss sniping at him all the time. So, at last, Jon looks up at Martin and gives a nod. It’s feeling sillier and sillier to use human mannerisms, but he has a feeling that biting Martin again probably wouldn’t convey his feelings accurately.
Martin looks relieved. “Grand,” he says. “Now…”
Suddenly inspired, Jon darts away again, slipping behind the sofa. “Jon!” Martin cries after him. “What did we just agree on?”
Jon ignores him. He’s already spotted the woodlouse, which is puttering along the skirting board again. Jon taps at it to make it curl up, and then picks it up very carefully in his teeth and trots back towards Martin.
“Honestly,” Martin says, and then, as Jon jumps onto the sofa beside him, “What have you got there?” Jon drops the woodlouse on Martin’s thigh and Martin pokes at it. “Is that a cheesebob? Why’ve you brought me a cheesebob, Jon?” He looks at him, frowning, and then back down at the woodlouse, and then he sighs. “Thanks, Jon. That’s really nice of you. Weird, but nice.”
Feeling very smug, Jon meows at him. Now they’re communicating.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re the best cat in all the world,” Martin says, rolling his eyes. He lifts his hand, obviously to pet Jon, and then hastily retracts it.
Which is fine.
It’s fine.
Jon doesn’t want to be petted. He doesn’t want Martin’s big, soft hand to smooth the fur all the way down his back. He doesn’t want Martin’s sturdy fingers to scratch him behind his ears or give him a good hard rub under the chin. He doesn’t.
It’ll be fine to shuffle a little closer though, won’t it? Cats like the warmth, and Martin is so very warm. It practically radiates off him. Jon just has to slink a little, and… yes. Cats are so stealthy! It’s brilliant! Martin hasn’t even noticed Jon creeping closer!
“Er, Jon?” Martin says, sounding a bit nervous. Jon cranes his neck a little to subtly rub his face against Martin’s sleeve. “You, er, you’re practically in my lap?”
Oh shit, he’s noticed! Jon shoots to the end of the sofa and perches on the armrest, staring fixedly at a print of a painting of the North York Moors, purple with heather and sunlight. At least, it mostly looks blue through Jon’s cat eyes, but he knows what colour it’s meant to be.
“I… I mean, it’s fine if you want me to pet you,” Martin says, and Jon can see out of the corner of his eye that his cheeks have darkened slightly. “I don’t mind. Cats are… are nice.”
Cats are nice, it’s true. Martin probably deserves a reward for having such an exceedingly correct opinion. A reward like, say, being allowed to pet Jon. Just for a minute.
Jon looks at him.
Jon looks back at the North York Moors print and flicks his tail a few times.
Jon looks at Martin.
With extreme nonchalance, such elegant carelessness that he nearly falls right off the edge of the sofa, Jon hops down from his perch and sidles across to where Martin’s still sitting, watching him with unmistakeable amusement. Out of the kindness and generosity of his heart, Jon decides to ignore the amusement as, heart suddenly beating a little faster than usual, he puts a tentative paw on Martin’s leg. Nothing happens, so he puts another paw beside it and looks up at Martin.
“You, er, you want me to…?” Martin lifts his hand. Jon butts his head against it. “You’re not going to bite me again, are you?”
As if Jon would. He pushes at Martin’s hand again, and this time Martin shifts his fingers so that Jon’s rubbing against his knuckles, and he pushes back so that Jon’s getting a proper face rub.
Mmm.
Jon pushes himself harder against Martin’s hard, closing his eyes happily. Martin’s other hand starts stroking his back gently, and Jon is in heaven. He feels Martin shift slightly under him, hears him give a small, quiet laugh, feels the warmth of his hands in Jon’s fur, his thighs underneath him, his belly against Jon’s side, and oh—at some point Jon’s ended up fully on Martin’s lap, his paws kneading absently at Martin’s leg, leaning comfortably up in the crook of Martin’s arm as he strokes him.
It’s lovely.
Every time Martin starts a new stroke, he brings his hand right up to Jon’s head where Jon can see it for a moment before it moves down his neck and over his spine. He watches it lazily for some time, and then, because there’s something so enticing about that hand, soft and strong at the same time, with nails trimmed short and some mysterious knowledge, either learned or instinctive, of exactly how to pet a cat so that it’ll feel nice, he leaps without warning, catching the hand between his paws and sinking his teeth into it.
“Jon!” Martin wails. There’s a brief tussle for his hand, which Martin wins. He tucks both his hands away under his thighs where Jon can’t get them. Unfair. “Why do you keep doing that? I thought you wanted me to pet you!”
Jon meows. Of course he wanted Martin to pet him. He still does. It’s very annoying that he’s stopped, and even more annoying that he’s hidden his hands away. Jon pokes his nose down into the crease of the sofa where Martin’s wrist disappears under his leg, but there’s no getting at those lovely fingers. He nibbles at Martin’s wrist.
“Stop it! Oh my god, what am I doing wrong? Can you show me where you don’t want to be touched so that I can stop doing it?”
Jon sits back up and looks at him. He can’t, offhand, think of any non-verbal way to explain that Martin hasn’t done anything wrong and has, in fact, done many things right, it’s just that Jon likes biting in general and biting Martin in particular. He licks Martin’s chin. Martin screws his face up.
“I don’t know what you mean by that, Jon,” he says. “You don’t want me to touch your face, is that it?”
Jon meows. Silly Martin.
Martin is watching him, apparently hoping for further communication, but that’s all Jon’s got. He doesn’t know what Martin’s expecting.
Finally, Martin sighs. “All right, I guess we’re not getting anywhere with this. Want to watch some Bake Off?”
Jon does not want to watch Bake Off. He never actually has, but it sounds ridiculous and boring. Why can’t Martin choose a nice documentary? There’s been one he’s been meaning to watch for ages about hoverflies. It would be pleasant to watch that with Martin. But he has no way to explain this, and anyway, Martin is already starting Bake Off and settling himself more comfortably on the sofa. Jon tries to butt at his hand again to get Martin to pet him, but Martin tucks it back under his leg and says, “Oh no, I’m not doing it wrong and getting bitten again, not if you aren’t even going to try to tell me what I did.”
Fine. Jon will just curl up in Martin’s lap and rest his chin on Martin’s knee, and, yes, he won’t even bother to suppress the purr that comes rumbling up through his chest. That’ll show Martin.
He doesn’t mean to drift off, but he hasn’t had a proper full night’s sleep in about three years and cats are famously excellent sleepers, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that when he slowly blinks his eyes open again it’s to Martin yawning loudly somewhere above him and notably fewer bakers in the tent.
“I’m knackered,” Martin says. “I think I’m going to go to bed. Oh, you’re awake! I was thinking, do you need to er, you know, go out? Before we go to bed?”
Jon stares up at him, a bit baffled.
“To pee, I mean,” Martin clarifies. “Or anything else. It’s just, I don’t have a litter tray or anything, and I don’t know how easy it’d be for you to use the loo, so…”
Jon meows.
“Yeah, I still don’t know what that means,” Martin says. “One for yes, two for no?”
Jon meows once.
Martin stares at him. “I can’t tell whether you’re meowing one for yes or if you’re just being Jon again.”
Honestly, Jon’s trying to help here.
Eventually Martin decides Jon means he does need to go out and takes him down to a tiny area of grass and a couple of bushes that are probably described as a park by estate agents, and Jon darts into the privacy of the middle of one of the bushes to do his business.
“I’ll leave the bathroom door open in case you need to go again in the night,” Martin says as he trudges back up the stairs with Jon in his arms. “At least try and use the toilet if you do, yeah? I don’t want to have to clean up cat wee if I don’t have to.”
Jon meows. He doesn’t want Martin to have to clean up cat wee either, especially his. That’s not the way to get Martin to forgive him.
“Will you be all right sleeping on the sofa?” Martin asks, letting himself back into the flat. “I’ve got a couple of blankets I use when it’s really cold at night, so I thought I could put them on the sofa for a bed for you. And I’ll leave my bedroom door open a crack so you can get me if anything happens. Not that anything will, but, you know, just in case. Yeah.” He puts Jon down and locks the door behind them again.
Jon, having long grown bored of once for yes, twice for no, hops up onto the sofa to show that he approves of Martin’s plan. Martin’s mouth quirks up a little at the corner before he turns away and reaches into a cupboard for the blankets, which he spends a lot longer than seems necessary arranging into a cosy little nest beside the armrest nearest the window. At last he stands upright again and surveys his handiwork.
“Is this all right?” he says. “Do you need me to change anything? I’ve got a spare pillow, too, if you’d like that? Or a box? Would you rather have a box?”
Jon plonks himself down in the middle of the nest and rests his chin on his paws, eyeballing Martin to make sure he gets the message.
“Right,” Martin says. “Cool. Great. And there’s a bowl of water for you in the kitchen, and I’m leaving the bathroom door open in case you need to… yeah. And if you do need anything in the night I’m just in the next room, so… you’ll be okay?”
Jon meows.
“Great,” Martin says again. “Well. Night, then!”
He gives Jon a little wave, switches the light off, and leaves the room. Honestly, anyone would think Jon was completely incapable of looking after himself.
Alone at last – and there is nothing Jonathan Sims, cat or human, loves more than solitude – Jon spends several minutes turning around and around in his little blanket nest, arranging and rearranging the blankets until they’re to his liking.
Then he realises he’s thirsty and gets up to have a drink, and when he gets back to his bed the blankets have somehow rearranged themselves so that they’re bunched up all wrong around him, and he has to spend a long time twisting, biting, and shuffling them into submission.
The moon is no more than a pale sliver, but Jon’s cat eyes can see amazingly well in the darkness. He closes them and waits to fall asleep.
And waits.
And waits.
Ugh. He hates nights like this, where no matter what he does his body just refuses to shut itself down, instead getting more and more awake as he becomes angrier and angrier over his state of wakefulness. He’s got his bedtime routine down to a science to try to avoid it, but it still happens sometimes. He’d thought that being a cat would make it easy to sleep. Cats sleep all the damn time.
Just his luck to be the exception.
He gets up and winds himself into a more comfortable position, except that now the label of one of the blankets is poking him in the foot, and when he shifts away from it he finds himself with a faceful of blanket, and that’s no good either.
He gets up and rearranges his bed again, but is so vigorous about it that the blankets tumble off the sofa onto the floor. Jon stares down at them in disgust.
He doesn’t want to sleep on the floor.
As if to add insult to injury, contented little snores have been drifting through from Martin’s bedroom for some time now. Jon bets Martin’s bed is far more comfortable than this stupid blanket nest on the stupid floor. He’ll have a nice springy mattress and a lovely thick duvet, plus there’ll be all his delicious body heat just going to waste in there.
Jon hates waste.
He hops off the sofa and pads on silent feet towards Martin’s bedroom door. It’s only open a tiny crack, but it doesn’t creak as Jon pushes against it with his body and slides through the little gap. And there’s Martin, a motionless, curled up lump in the middle of the bed, small snores still rumbling through him.
Jon leaps silently onto the bed, and yes, he was right! The duvet is thick and luxurious, and Martin is so, so, warm. Jon finds himself an optimum spot against Martin’s belly, boxed in by Martin’s legs, pulled upwards, and one of his lovely big arms, lying limp and relaxed on top of the duvet. He can feel Martin’s body moving slightly as he breathes, his snores sending little vibrations through them both, the smell of him, familiar and safe, all around.
Heaven.
Jon falls asleep almost immediately.